Musical Star

by Rowan Coleman

  amc: It goes to show that what really matters is your talent and not who you know, although a lot of really talented kids didn’t make it through to the final.

  tg: Neither of you girls have previously had lead roles in either TV or film – how does that make you feel?

  amc: I feel it’s about time, I’ve been waiting for my big break for ages!

  jc: It makes me feel amazingly proud and lucky, of course, and a little bit scared too. I’m determined to give it my best shot.

  tg: Jade, has the fact that you’re Mick Caruso’s daughter given you any problems with your other cast members?

  jc: I think the fact that I won the public vote against some pretty stiff competition shows that I earned my role. But everyone has been wonderful. Anne-Marie and the other girls in the chorus are like my sisters now, which is great because my real sister is a total pain in the neck!

  tg: What about the leading lads? Jade is lucky enough to have Teen Girl fave Danny Harvey all to herself, so tell us, Anne-Marie, is David Rubenfeld just as cute?

  amc: He’s easily as cute as Danny Harvey any day of the week.

  jc: And like Danny he really is a great performer, which is far more important than how a person looks, even if he is pretty cute.

  amc: Yes, David and I do make a talented pair.

  jc: It’s great to have such strong support for mine and Danny’s starring roles.

  tg: The opening night is not far away now. Are you nervous?

  amc: Not remotely. Why would I be? I rock!

  jc: A few jitters are healthy and I know I’m very nervous. There would be nothing worse than letting over-confidence and arrogance catch you out on the night. It would let down all the people that were kind enough to vote.

  We at Teen Girl! have a very special prize for you to win and that’s ten – count ‘em, ten! – pairs of VIP tickets to see the TV premiere of Spotlight! The Musical among an audience of top celebrities. Just answer this question.

  Which former child star is now finding her feet in the chorus of Spotlight!?

  Text or e-mail your answers FREE to the usual address by twelve noon on Friday! Good luck!

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Well that’s just typical of the press,” Anne-Marie said, flinging Dakshima’s copy of Teen Girl! down during our break at Saturday’s rehearsal. “They twisted everything I said to make me look shallow and Jade look all lovely and nice.”

  “So you didn’t say any of that stuff?” Dakshima asked, retrieving the magazine and smoothing it out.

  “I said it, but not in the way they printed it. I was being light-hearted and jokey.” She sniffed a little. “When you see it on the page it makes me look like a right cow!”

  “Well, it is kind of hard to print jokeyness, I imagine,” I said. “You should have asked them to print stage directions, like in a script. Anyway, never mind your humiliation, what about mine? Did you see that competition question?”

  “Oh, yeah, that was Jade’s idea,” Anne-Marie said. “Told the journalist she wanted everyone to know how talented even the chorus was. Yeah, right.”

  “Typical Jade,” I sighed. “That’s just the catty sort of thing she would do to get at me. I thought her ignoring me for the last couple of weeks was too easy.”

  “Just forget about it,” Anne-Marie said. “We’ve got more important things to worry about. Miss Baptista and Mick are going to watch our first full rehearsal in the TV studio today. And the behind-the-scenes film crew are going crazy trying to stir up things up.”

  “Doesn’t look like they’ll have to do that much stirring between you and Jade,” Dakshima grinned.

  “You can’t believe everything you read!” Anne-Marie exclaimed. “Even if it is technically true…”

  “Hi, Ruby.” Danny stopped by our table, his cheeks flaring as each we all stared at him.

  “And ‘hi, Anne-Marie and Dakshima’ too,” Anne-Marie said. “Or have we become invisible?”

  “Hi, Danny,” I replied, shooting Anne-Marie a ‘button it or else’ look.

  “I was just going to hang around outside for a bit and I wondered if you wanted to…hang about too,” Danny faltered.

  Dakshima snorted into her drink and Anne-Marie hastily picked up the discarded copy of Teen Girl! and held it up in front of her face. I could see her shoulders shaking with laughter.

  “Thanks, I could do with some fresh air actually,” I said, kicking Anne-Marie under the table hard enough to make her yelp. “See you in a couple of minutes, girls.”

  Once outside, standing next to the wheely bins Danny laughed, his shoulder relaxing.

  “That wasn’t my coolest moment,” he said. “I sounded like a right idiot. I’ve been trying to talk to you on your own all day, but I couldn’t work out how.”

  “Well, it worked,” I smiled, hugging myself against the chill of the cold afternoon. “I’m here now so – what did you want to say to me?”

  Danny looked at me for a moment as if I had just asked him the most terrifying question he had ever heard.

  “Nothing really,” he said. “I just wanted us to talk. You know, so that we can be cool around each other again…”

  “Oh, right,” I said, trying hard to hide my disappointment. Ever since that late night phone conversation I’d thought that maybe, just maybe, he might asked me out again, and once I’d allowed myself to think about it I realised that I wouldn’t mind much if he did. In fact I’d really like it.

  We’d chatted a few times since then, in the corridors at rehearsals and once after school when I bumped into him on the way home. Each time it always seemed that he was on the verge of saying something else, but didn’t. I had hoped that by now he might have decided what it was.

  If Danny asked me out and if I said yes (obviously I would) then not only would I be really happy, I’d be able to tell him about the Auto-tune Miracle Microphone and he wouldn’t hate me. Because he’d realise I was doing the right thing and trying to help him. Dakshima assured me that she was working on plan of how to fix everything without wrecking the show for everyone else, but I had absolutely no idea how she could.

  “What do you think Mick Caruso and Miss Baptista will think of the show today?” I asked Danny.

  “Honestly? I’m not sure we’re ready yet. There’s only a week to go before the live TV performance and I think Miss Baptista’s going to be shouting at us for most of it. I keep forgetting my dance moves and Jade can’t seem to remember half the words to the songs!”

  “You’re probably right,” I said, thinking how Anne-Marie said that rehearsing with Miss Baptista was like joining a showbusiness army. “But considering most of the cast has never done anything like this before and that we’re all really, really trying, I’m not sure we’re going to be any better than we are at this point.”

  “There’s still a week to go,” Danny smiled. “A lot can happen in a week. And I don’t think that Miss Baptista will really throw any of us off the show.”

  “Especially not Jade,” I said. “Even if she can’t remember all of her lines after nearly a month of rehearsals.”

  “She’s learnt them. I’ve helped her,” Danny said, making me look up sharply. “I’ve got to know her a lot better in these last few weeks and it’s the nerves that get her.” He blushed. “You know, I even have to kiss her in the show, which is a bit weird. But once you get to know her you realise she’s actually quite a laugh. I think all that snotty harsh stuff she pulls is really to cover up how shy she is. Everyone knows how hard she’s worked and her voice is sounding really great.”

  “Maybe…” I said, unconvinced but unable to tell Danny why.

  “Come on, Rube,” Danny said, shortening my name in a way he hadn’t since we split up. “Don’t be so harsh. You, of everyone, should know how that feels.”

  “I do,” I sighed, unable to look him in the eye. “Well, we’d better get back.”

  “Yes, we had,” Danny said. Without warning he reached out and took my hand in
his. I think I would have dropped dead on the spot, if it wasn’t for the fact that I had to keep my heart beating just so I could hear what he was going to say next. “It’s really great getting to know you again, Ruby Parker. I’ve really missed hanging out with you.”

  “Really? Because—” I didn’t know what I wanted to say and I never got the chance to find out.

  “Danny! There you are!” Danny dropped my hand as Jade came and put her arm around him, squeezing him hard and grinning at me. “Tristan wants us all back for our last rehearsal before we head off to the TV studio, and you know I really want to do my best for Daddy, so I need you now.” She eyed me disdainfully. “And the last thing we need is to be held up by the chorus.”

  “I’m coming…” I began, as Jade walked off with Danny, her arm clamped around his shoulders. He didn’t even look back. I trailed behind cluelessly. A minute ago I would have been approximately ninety-seven per cent sure that Danny still liked me, but now I wondered if he was actually about to tell me that he was going to ask Jade out. Stranger things have happened. Jade was very pretty after all, and it she’d apparently been showing Danny her nicer side – even if it was a side based wholly on lies and deceit.

  I sighed and tried to shake the idea way. After all, nothing had really changed. I hadn’t been going out with Danny before lunch, and I wasn’t going out with Danny after lunch either.

  So why did I feel as if something that should have happened hadn’t?

  Danny was chatting with the boys from the chorus as I walked back in the rehearsal room and Jade was waiting for me. She stepped in front of me and backed me out into the empty corridor.

  “Stay away from him,” she said very quietly. She may have been smiling with her mouth but her eyes looked deadly.

  “What?” I said, drawing myself up to my fullest height, which was still a couple of centimetres shorter than Jade. “Are you seriously trying to warn me off being friends with Danny?”

  Jade looked me up and down and barked one short hard laugh. “I’m not warning you, I’m telling you and I’m doing you a favour. Anyone can see you’re still into him. It’s pathetic. Well, he might be nice enough to talk to you, but he’s not into you. Trust me, I know. Once he’s officially going out with me, you’ll have to stay away from him completely.”

  “He’s not going to ask you out,” I said, thinking of the way he’d held my hand moments before and wondering once more what it meant. But I wasn’t certain of that statement and Jade pounced on that uncertainty.

  “Oh no? Funny that, because we’ve been spending a lot of time together rehearsing our screen kiss a lot, and not just in rehearsals.” Jade gave me a little poke in the shoulder. “Get over him, Ruby. Why would he want a has-been like you? It’s me he’s into now and don’t try and take him because I always get my way – or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Oh, I’d noticed,” I said, the knowledge bubbling up inside me. “And I know how too.”

  “What do you mean by that, loser?” Jade asked, narrowing her eyes.

  “I mean I know,” I said, moving my face a little closer so that this time it was Jade that moved away from me. “I know everything.”

  “Ladies!” Tristan appeared in the doorway, breaking the tension. “Places, please. We’ve got a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it in.”

  I smiled at Jade and walked back into the rehearsal room. It was a second or two before Jade followed me.

  Jade was dreadful for the rest of the rehearsal, forgetting her lines, missing her cues and stumbling in the dance routines. Tristan had to keep on stopping a scene that up until now we had been performing all the way through without any major problems.

  “Jade,” Tristan said patiently, at the fourth or fifth mistake, “you seem to have lost your focus since the break. Is it something I can help you with? Are you nervous about performing for your father?”

  “Don’t be so ridiculous!” Jade shrieked, flinging her prop ballet bag on the floor and stamping her feet. “It’s not me!” She gestured at the rest of the cast. “I’m not the one who’s getting it wrong, it’s them, it’s all of them! Can’t you see I’m the only professional here? I want my daddy!”

  And with one more stamp of her foot she marched out of the room, leaving the rest of us open-mouthed.

  “What did you say to her in the corridor?” Dakshima asked me, wide-eyed, as we watched Tristan bury his head in his hands for a moment. “Whatever it was it really freaked her out.”

  “Nothing really,” I told Dakshima. “I just told her that I knew. I didn’t say what I knew, just that I did. And judging by the way that she’s reacted, she must know about the Auto-tune Miracle Microphones, otherwise why would she go mental like that?”

  “Unless there’s something else that she thinks you know, that you don’t know, but now she thinks she knows that you know, and knowing that is doing her head in,” Dakshima whispered.

  “Huh?” I looked at Dakshima, who shrugged.

  “Meh. I lost track after the second ‘know’.”

  “Right!” Tristan clapped his hands together. “The show must go on and we can’t wait for little girls who have tantrums – who’s the understudy for Arial?”

  Everyone was silent, staring blankly back at Tristan.

  “Come on,” Tristan said, taping his foot impatiently. “One of the very first things I did was to assign a chorus member to understudy every lead character…” he trailed off and clapped his hand over his mouth.

  “I’m totally and completely fired,” he said, more to himself than to us. “What with all the rush, I forgot to assign understudies! Why didn’t any of you tell me? Because you’re kids and half of you are amateurs, that’s why.” Tristan banged his forehead with the heel of his hand. “This is what happens when I get forced into rehearsing a bunch of children for a major show in less than a month. Things get missed, things go wrong. I told Carmen that, but would she listen to me? Does she ever listen to anyone? Of course not – she’s Carmen Baptista and she wants to show the whole world that she can do the impossible. Well it won’t work, and it’s not my fault and I’m still going to get fired!”

  “It’s probably not that bad,” Dakshima piped up, stopping Tristan in mid rant. He paused and looked at her one eyebrow raised. “After all, it’s not like Jade’s broken her leg or anything. She’ll be back. And now you’ve remembered the understudies you can get them sorted. I bet a load of people here remember all the lines for the main characters, and we all know the songs. Ruby – you know Arial’s lines, don’t you?” Dakshima dug me in the ribs.

  “No, I don’t, I can’t,” I said, as Tristan eyed me. “I don’t want to…”

  “Want to what?” Tristan asked me hopefully.

  “Go on, the guy is having a nervous breakdown and you can help,” Dakshima urged me.

  “Yes, but I’ve left show business…”

  “Ruby, you are standing in a rehearsal room on the verge of performing live on national TV! Isn’t it about time you admitted that the last thing you’ve done is give up your dream. This is you, it’s who you are!” Dakshima told me.

  I stood stock still like a rabbit caught in headlights, making Dakshima tut and shake her head. “Tristan!” she called out. “Ruby knows Arial’s lines. She knows them all, and the songs and the dance routines too.”

  “Is that true, Ruby?” Tristan asked.

  “Um, yes,” I said slowly. “I’ve been helping Anne-Marie learn her lines and so I’ve sort of learnt Arial’s by accident. I suppose I can step in while Jade calms down if you like, so we can keep going.”

  “And be my understudy for Jade?” Tristan pushed.

  “I suppose so,” I said. Dakshima dug me in the ribs again, harder this time “I mean, yes. Yes please, Tristan, I’d love to.” And as I said the words, a little thrill rushed through me because I knew I was back. For the first time in weeks, knowing that made me happy.

  “Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, you are an angel!” Tristan beamed at us a
ll. “Right, let’s crack on, Mr Caruso and Miss Baptista are going to be judging us in a matter of hours and we don’t want to waste any more time. It’s Arial and Sebastian’s sweet little kiss scene next…”

  I went over and stood next to Danny, and we gazed into each other’s eyes.

  “I’m so sorry that I let everything that happened to me come between us,” I said, speaking Arial’s lines. “I never meant for you to think that our friendship wasn’t as important to me as the spotlight. Knowing you means everything to me…”

  Danny took my hand and said Sebastian’s lines. “And I’m sorry that I didn’t see how hard everything was for you, that I was stubborn and stupid. You mean so much to me, Ruby…”

  “STOP!” Tristan shouted. “Arial, Arial, her name’s Arial not Ruby. Focus, Danny!”

  “Um, sorry,” Danny said, blushing bright red, which made my cheeks hot too.

  “You never have this trouble when you’re about to kiss Jade,” Tristan said, making everyone giggle. “Take it from the last line again, please.”

  Danny picked up my hand again and took a breath before looking me in the eye again. “And I’m sorry that I didn’t see how hard everything was for you, that I was stubborn and stupid. You mean so much to me, Arial – you’re my starlight girl.”

  And as the music of that song began to swell, Danny, that is Sebastian, drew me, I mean Arial, closer to him, bent his head and kissed me softly on the lips.

  “Stop!” I dimly heard Tristan say. “STOP!”

  Danny and I broke apart. “I got the name right didn’t I?” he asked Tristan.

  “Yes, but you were so busy kissing Ruby here that you missed the start of the song!”

  It took a long time for the whistling, cheering and laughter to stop.

  I found it hard to look Danny in the eye since our stage kiss overran, feeling even more confused than ever about how he might or might not feel about me. I was actually glad when Jade came back after about an hour, composed once more.